Shakespeare's plays were the product of his culture and reflect the daily life of Elizabethans. This book examines the religious background of his works and helps students use his plays to understand religion in Elizabethan England. The initial chapters survey the role of religion in Shakespeare's world. The volume then looks at religion in his plays and how productions from different periods have addressed the religious issues of his drama. A chapter then overviews criticism on Shakespeare and religion, while a selection of primary documents illuminates his religious milieu. Students often find the Elizabethan world fascinating yet challenging. The same can be said of Shakespeare's plays, which reflect the daily life and concerns of Elizabethan England and grew out of his milieu. Written for students, this book illuminates the religious life of Elizabethan England, promotes a greater understanding of Shakespeare's plays, and uses Shakespeare's works to examine Early Modern religious culture. The volume begins with a quick overview of the origins of Elizabethan religious traditions, followed by a more detailed consideration of the chief religious beliefs and concerns of Shakespeare's world. It then discusses the role of religion in Shakespeare's plays. This is followed by a look at how various productions have interpreted his religious concerns. A review of criticism on Shakespeare and religion follows, along with a selection of primary documents related to religion in his world. A glossary defines key terms and concepts, and a bibliography cites print and electronic resources for further study. Literature students will welcome this book as a guide to Shakespeare's plays, while history students will value it for using his plays to examine religion in the Early Modern era.

A Will to Believe is a revised version of Kastan's 2008 Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures, providing a provocative account of the ways in which religion animates Shakespeare's plays.

In The Age of Shakespeare, Frank Kermode uses the history and culture of the Elizabethan era to enlighten us about William Shakespeare and his poetry and plays. Opening with the big picture of the religious and dynastic events that defined England in the age of the Tudors, Kermode takes the reader on a tour of Shakespeare’s England, vividly portraying London’s society, its early capitalism, its court, its bursting population, and its epidemics, as well as its arts—including, of course, its theater. Then Kermode focuses on Shakespeare himself and his career, all in the context of the time in which he lived. Kermode reads each play against the backdrop of its probable year of composition, providing new historical insights into Shakspeare’s characters, themes, and sources. The result is an important, lasting, and concise companion guide to the works of Shakespeare by one of our most eminent literary scholars.

The crises of faith that fractured Reformation Europe also caused crises of individual and collective identity. Structures of feeling as well as structures of belief were transformed; there was a reformation of social emotions as well as a Reformation of faith. As Steven Mullaney shows in The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare, Elizabethan popular drama played a significant role in confronting the uncertainties and unresolved traumas of Elizabethan Protestant England. Shakespeare and his contemporaries—audiences as well as playwrights—reshaped popular drama into a new form of embodied social, critical, and affective thought. Examining a variety of works, from revenge plays to Shakespeare’s first history tetralogy and beyond, Mullaney explores how post-Reformation drama not only exposed these faultlines of society on stage but also provoked playgoers in the audience to acknowledge their shared differences. He demonstrates that our most lasting works of culture remain powerful largely because of their deep roots in the emotional landscape of their times.

A wide-ranging yet accessible investigation into the importance of religion in Shakespeare's works, from a team of eminent international scholars.

This book throws new light on the issue of the dramatist's religious orientation by dismissing sectarian and one-sided theories, tackling the problem from the angle of the variegated Elizabethan context recently uncovered by modern historians and theatre scholars. It is argued that faith was a quest rather than a quiet certainty for the playwright.